Nina Simone’s legendary 1966 performance at the Newport Jazz Festival has been talked about in small circles with awe for half a century. This is due in part to two things: Her set was so captivating that the audience wouldn’t let the next act on the stage; they hooted and cajoled the festival’s emcee until he finally announced she’d be back for an encore. It was also for the revamped version of her passionate “Mississippi Goddam.” For completists, fans, and anyone who even vaguely loves Simone’s music, the Newport “Mississippi Goddam” has been like a vapor in the wind: often discussed, rarely heard.
You’ve Got to Learn is the first-ever release of this specific Newport set, in honor of what would have been Simone’s 90th birthday. Of course, there’s no shortage of recordings of Simone playing live. From her first time at Newport in 1960 all the way to her sets at the London jazz club Ronnie Scott’s in the ’80s, the stage is where her endless artistry shone brightest, and where her often unpredictable stage demeanor deepened our understanding of a brilliant and troubled artist. But this set captures a moment at the height of the Civil Rights Movement, after the marches in Selma and Jackson where Simone performed, but before many of her friends like Langston Hughes or Martin Luther King Jr. had died. On You’ve Got to Learn, Simone renders familiar songs in unique arrangements, and its political urgency translates through a particular serenity in her performance, like she was both eye and the hurricane.
As the set begins to rapt applause, Simone goes back to the roots of blues, grounding each track in the foundation from whence they came. The wrenching title song—recorded with strings and soothing background vocals for 1965’s I Got a Spell On You—is presented here in its true form, a powerfully sad and gritty blueprint for suppressing the pain of a broken heart until it scars over. On “I Loves You Porgy,” the George Gershwin tune that made her a star, she sounds stranded in the muck of human emotions. In an interlude introducing the commanding “Blues For Mama,” she sets the scene in her honeyed, regal speaking voice: “There is an old porch, and there’s an old man, and there’s a beat-up guitar and a broken bottle. There are flies all around, there is molasses all around, and he is composing his tune on a hot afternoon.” In that political moment, if inadvertently, she traces the long road from the origins of the blues to the fight for liberation, but also brings it home: “It will appeal to a certain type of woman who’s had this kind of experience.” Simone, too—the pain is just at the surface, but she’ll let it all out on the piano.